The Riddles of the World and Anthroposophy

Schmidt Number: S-1131

On-line since: 15th August, 2016

Haeckel, the Riddles of the World and Theosophy

Berlin, 5th October 1905

Speaking about the subject: Haeckel, the Riddles of the
World and Theosophy, I know that this subject causes
extraordinary difficulties to the explorer of the spiritual
life, and that my explanations may scandalise the left and the
right. However, it seems to be a necessity for me to speak once
from the theosophical point of view about that, because on the
one hand the Gospel, which Haeckel has gained from his
researches, has found access to thousands and thousands of
human beings by means of his book The Riddles of the
World (1899). Ten thousand copies were sold after a
short time, and it was translated into many languages. Seldom
has such a serious book found such a big spreading.

If
theosophy or spiritual science should spell out its purposes,
it must discuss such an important phenomenon, which also deals
with the deepest questions of existence, and must express its
standpoint. In principle, the theosophical or
spiritual-scientific consideration of life is not there for
struggle, but for reconciliation, for the balance of contrasts.
I am also in a particular position compared with the worldview
of Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919). For I know the sensations and
feelings, which lead the human being partially from his
scientific conscience, partially from the general international
situation and worldview, into the fascinating, simple, big
lines of thought which Haeckel's worldview consists of. I would
not dare to speak so impartially today if I were an adversary
of Haeckel, if I did not exactly know what one could
experience, if you immerse yourselves in this miraculous
construction of his ideas.

However, somebody who looks at the development of the spiritual
life with an open sense must recognise the moral strength of
Haeckel's working. With tremendous courage, this man has fought
for his worldview since decades, has hard fought and had to
overcome manifold opposition. On the other side, we may not
misjudge that in Haeckel a big strength of comprising
representation and thinking lives. He has in a great measure
what is absent to many naturalists in this respect. He has
ventured to summarise the results of his researches in a
worldview, even though in the last decades the actual
scientific currents were directed against such an enterprise.
This must be acknowledged as an action of a particular kind,
compared also with the theosophical worldview. I am in a
peculiar position if I speak about Haeckel.

Who
has dealt with the development of the theosophical movement
knows that the theosophists and just the founder of the
theosophical movement, Mrs. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, fought
with sharp words against the consequences, which Ernst Haeckel
drew from his researches. She fights in the Secret
Doctrine (1887-1897) against few phenomena in the fields of
worldviews with such passion as just against Haeckel's
arguments. I may be allowed to speak impartially because I
believe, partly in my writing Haeckel and His Adversaries
(1900, now in GA 30), as well as in my book about The
Worldviews andApproaches to Life in the Nineteenth
Century (The Riddles of Philosophy) to have
satisfied the real truth contents of Haeckel's worldview in its
entirety. I believe to have picked out of his works, what is
imperishable what is fertile.

Look at the situation of the worldview, as far as it rests on
scientific reasons. Still in the first half of the 19th
century, the spiritual orientation was different from in the
second one. Haeckel appeared at a time in which it seemed very
much reasonable to give a materialistic consequence to the new
so-called Darwinism. It suggested itself immediately at that
time, when Haeckel entered the natural sciences as a young
enthusiastic researcher, to interpret all scientific
discoveries materialistically. Then you understand the
materialistic tendency and you take the way of peace endowment
and less that of struggle. If you look at those who have
directed their look freely at the big human riddles in the
middle of the 19th century, you find two attitudes.

On
the one side, there is a complete resignation towards the
highest questions of existence, a concession to be unable to
penetrate from the scientific standpoint to the questions of
immortality, of the freedom of will, of the origin of life,
briefly to the real riddles of the world. On the other side,
you find except for this resigning mood still leftovers of an
old religious tradition also with the naturalists. You find
courageous advance with the investigation of these questions,
from the scientific point of view, in the first half of the
19th century only with the German philosophers, for example,
with Schelling, Fichte or also with Oken (Lorenz O., 1779-1851,
German naturalist), a man of freedom unparalleled also in other
fields of life. You can already find along general lines with
Oken what haunts today with the naturalists who want to found
worldviews. However, a peculiar breath of wind still blows
above it, the sensation of the old spiritualism still lives in
it, which realises that behind everything that you can perceive
by the senses and investigate by the instruments you have to
look for something spiritual.

Haeckel himself told repeatedly how through the mind of his
great teacher, the unforgettable naturalist Johannes
Müller (1801-1851), this peculiar breath blew. When
Haeckel was occupied on the Berlin university with Johannes
Müller and studied the anatomy of the animals and the
human being, the big anatomical resemblance of man and animal
struck him, not only the resemblance of the external form, but
also of that which comes to the fore in the form. You can read
it up with Haeckel. How he expressed then towards the teacher
that this points to a mysterious relationship of the animals
and the human being. Johannes Müller, who had looked so
deeply into nature, answered, yes, someone who once fathoms the
secret of the species arrives at the highest. — You have
to immerse yourselves just in the soul of such a researcher who
would certainly not have stopped if he ran a chance to
penetrate into the secret. Another time, when the teacher and
his student were on an expedition, Haeckel expressed again
which big relationship existed among the animals, and Johannes
Müller said once more something quite similar. Herewith, I
only wanted to mark a mood. If you read up with any significant
naturalist of the first half of the 19th century, for example,
with Burdach (Karl Friedrich B., 1776-1847, German
physiologist), you always find a tip to the fact that not only
physical and chemical forces have an effect, but also something
higher in the realm of life.

However, when the improvement of the microscope allowed looking
into the peculiar composition of the living being and when one
was able to observe that one dealt with a fine tissue of the
smallest living beings, there it changed. This physical body,
which serves plants and animals as a dress, disintegrates for
the naturalist in cells. The naturalists discovered the
cellular life at the end of the thirties of the 19th century.
Because one could investigate a lot of the life of the smallest
living beings in a sensuous way by means of the microscope, it
was obvious that one forgot and overlooked what works as an
organising principle in the living being because it cannot be
recognised by any physical sense or generally by anything
external.

At
that time, Darwinism did not yet exist, but under the
impressions of these big results, which were done in the field
of the investigation of the sensuous, the materialistic natural
sciences developed in the forties and fifties. One thought that
one could also understand the whole world from that which one
perceives with the senses and can explain. What seems to be
rather childish today caused a tremendous sensation and formed,
so to speak, a Gospel for humanity at that time. Matter and
energy were the catchwords, and Büchner, Moleschott and
others were the leading men. One regarded it as an expression
of childish imagination of former human epochs, if one supposed
anything that goes beyond the obvious, the sense-perceptible
with that which one could investigate in the minutest details
with the eyes.

You
have now to consider that beside any power of judgement, beside
any research, feelings and emotions play a great role in the
development of the spiritual life. Somebody who believes that
worldviews are formed only with the cool considerations of the
power of judgement is wrong. There also the heart has a say if
I may express myself radically. There also secret education
reasons are working. Humanity went through a materialistic
education in its last developmental phase. Indeed, this goes
far back in its beginnings; however, it arrived at its summit
only at the time of which we speak. We call this epoch of the
materialistic education the age of Enlightenment. The human
being had to find its way on this firm ground of reality. This
was also the last consequence of the Christian worldview.

He
should search for God, Whom he had searched for so long beyond
the clouds, in his own inside now. This had a deep effect on
the development of the 19th century. Somebody who wants to
study the development of humanity in the 19th century as a
psychologist understands all phenomena, which appear in it
— as for example the liberation movement in the thirties
and forties — only as single, regularly proceeding storms
of the developing feeling of the importance of physical
reality. One deals with an educational direction of humanity
that tore any view of a spiritual life out of the human heart.
The natural sciences did not draw the consequence that the
world consists of sensuous phenomena, but one drew materialism,
because of the human education of that time, into the
explanation of scientific facts. Who really studies the matters
impartially, how they are finds that it is in such a way as I
say, although I cannot express myself about that in detail in a
short talk.

The
quite tremendous progress in the fields of physical knowledge,
of astronomy, physics and chemistry, by means of spectral
analysis, by means of the enlarged theoretical knowledge of
heat and Darwin's evolution theory falls in this period of
materialism. If these discoveries had happened at a time in
which one would have thought as around the turn of the 18th to
the 19th century, when one still had a more spiritual
sensation, then one would have still regarded them also as
proofs of the workings of the spirit in nature. The miraculous
discoveries of the natural sciences would have led just to the
proof of the primate of the spirit. You realise that the
scientific discoveries did not have to lead in themselves
inevitably and under all circumstances to materialism; only
because many bearers of the spiritual life were
materialistically minded at this time, these discoveries were
interpreted materialistically.

Materialism was brought into the natural sciences, and
naturalists like Ernst Haeckel accepted it unconsciously.
Darwin's discovery would not have had to press to materialism.
In his first work, you find the sentence: I am of the opinion
that all living beings, which have ever been on earth, are
descendants of a prototype to which the Creator breathed life.
You read these words in Darwin's book about the origin of
species, that work, which materialism uses as its support.

It
is clear that a materialistic thinker facing these discoveries
had to give Darwinism a materialistic colouring. By Haeckel's
materialistic courageous way of thinking, Darwinism received
its present materialistic tendency. It had a big effect, when
in 1868 Haeckel announced the connection of the human being
with the apes. At that time, one could understand that in no
other way than that the human being is descended from the apes.
However, the thinking has experienced a peculiar course of
development up to now. Besides, Haeckel persisted in his
opinion that the human being is descended from the apes, these
again from lower animals and these lower animals again from the
simplest living beings finally.

Thus, he develops the whole pedigree of the human being. For
him, any spirit was eliminated from the world and it existed
only as a manifestation of the material. Haeckel still tries to
help himself, because he has in his core, beside his
materialistic thinker's soul, a peculiarly disposed,
spiritualistic sentient soul. These both could never compensate
one another in him, could never find a brotherly agreement.
Therefore, he gets around to attributing a kind of
consciousness to the smallest living being; however, it remains
inexplicable how the complex human consciousness develops from
the consciousness of the smallest living being. Haeckel said
once in a conversation, people are irked by my materialism; but
I do not at all deny spirit, I do not at all deny life;
nevertheless, I would want only that people think that if they
bring in substances to a retort soon everything lives and
weaves. — This shows rather clearly, how Haeckel has a
spiritualistic feeling soul beside his scientific thinker's
soul.

At
that time when Darwin appeared, one of those who also asserted
the origin of the human beings from the higher animals was the
English researcher Huxley (Thomas Henry H., 1825-1895,
biologist). He pronounced that such a big resemblance of the
external construction exists between the human being and the
higher animals that this resemblance is bigger than the
resemblance between the higher and lower simian species. One
can conclude only that the human being is descended from the
higher animals. In newer time, the researchers have found new
facts; also those sensations changed which trained heart and
soul for centuries of education. Thus, it happened in the
nineties that Huxley pronounced a view strange to him, shortly
before his death: we recognise a sequence of life in nature,
from the simplest and most imperfect up to the composite and
most perfect. We can survey this order. Why should this order
not continue in a field that we cannot survey?

In
these words, the way is suggested how the human being can
achieve the idea of a divine being from the physical research.
This divine being outranks the human being more than he himself
outranks a simple cellular being. Once Huxley said: I prefer to
be descended from such forefathers who are similar to animals
than from such who deny the human reason.

The
concepts and sensations have changed that way. Haeckel
continued his researches his way. Already in 1868, he published
his popular book The History of Creation. One can learn
a lot from it; one can learn how the realms of life are
connected. One can look into the grey times of the past and
connect the living with the extinct whose last leftovers exist
on earth. Haeckel had exactly understood this. I can make clear
the world-historical that happens further on only using a
comparison. Somebody who shows interest in such matters finds
that this comparison is not lamer than all comparisons are
lame, which can be suitable, however, in spite of all that.
Imagine that an art historian describes the big realm of
painting from Leonardo da Vinci up to now in a nice
art-historical treatise. Everything that has been created in
this period faces your soul and you believe to look into this
freely developing weaving and working of the human mind.
Imagine also that somebody comes and says with regard to this
description: everything that the art historian shows here is
nothing real, it is something that does not exist. This is only
a description of phantasms, which do not exist. What do these
phantasms concern me? One has to investigate the real to get a
correct art-historical representation.

Hence, I want to examine the skeletons of Leonardo da Vinci and
try to put together his body again. I also want to examine his
brain and how this has worked. — The art historian, as
well as the anatomical physical historian describes the same
matters. No mistake needs to occur, everything may be right.
Then the anatomical historian means: we have to fight to the
death what the idealistic art historians tell us, we must fight
against it as an imagination, because this is almost in such a
way as if a kind of superstition had overcome the human beings
which tries to make us believe that beside the figure of
Leonardo da Vinci also a gaseous whirl existed as soul.

This comparison is suitable, although it may seem stupid. In
such a situation is somebody who swears on the sole correctness
of Haeckel's Anthropogeny (1874). One cannot combat
Haeckel in such a way that one demonstrates mistakes to him.
Indeed, they may exist, but here it does not matter at all. It
is important that the sense-perceptible was shown once
according to its internal connection. Haeckel achieved this in
a big and comprehensive way. It has happened in such a way that
also somebody who wants to see can see how just the spiritual
is effective with the creation of the forms where apparently
only the matter prevails and works. One can learn a lot from
it; one can see how one spiritually grasps the material
connection in the world with severity, dignity, and
perseverance. Someone who studies Haeckel's Anthropogeny
sees how the form builds itself up from the simplest living
beings up to the most complex ones, from the simplest organisms
up to the human being. Who still knows how to add the spirit to
that which the materialist says studies the nicest elementary
theosophy with this Haeckelism!

Haeckel's research results establish, so to speak, the first
chapter of theosophy or spiritual science. You can familiarise
yourselves much better than with anything else with the origin
and transformation of the organic forms if you study his works.
We have every reason to show which great things were performed
by the progress of this thorough physical knowledge.

In
the times, when Haeckel erected this wonderful construction,
one considered the deeper riddles of humanity as unsolvable
problems. In a rhetorically brilliant speech, Du Bois-Reymond
(Emil D., 1818-1896, German physician and physiologist) spoke
about the limits of physical research and knowledge in 1872.
One has not spoken more about few things in the last decades
than about this speech with the famous
“ignorabimus” (we do not know and we shall not
know). It was an important action and shows an important
contrast to Haeckel's own development and his theory of the
origin of the human being. In another speech, Du Bois-Reymond
put the big questions of existence that the naturalist can
answer only partially or not at all, the “seven world
riddles,” namely:

(1) The origin of energy and matter.

(2) How did the first movement come into being in this resting
matter?

(3) How did life originate within the moved matter?

(4) How can one explain that so many things exist in nature,
which carry the stamp of usefulness on themselves, as only the
actions have that the human reason carries out?

(5) If we were able to investigate our brain, we would find
whirling small beads. How does one explain that these beads
achieve that I see red, that I hear organ tones, that I feel
pain etcetera? — Imagine the whirling atoms and you will
realise immediately that the sensation can never originate from
it, which expresses itself in the words, “I see red, I
smell a rose” etcetera.

(6) How do reason, thinking and talking develop within the
living beings?

(7) How can a free will originate in a being, which is so bound
that any action must be caused by the whirls of the atoms?

Following these “world riddles” of Du Bois-Reymond,
Haeckel just called his book The World Riddles
(1895-1899, English edition “The Riddle of the
Universe”, 1901). He wanted to give the answer to the
explanations of Du Bois-Reymond. A particular passage is in
that speech of Du Bois-Reymond about the limits of the
knowledge of nature. We are led to this important passage and
can be led to theosophy by them.

When Du Bois-Reymond spoke in Leipzig before the naturalists
and physicians, the spirit of physical research was on the
lookout for a pure, freer and higher air, for the air, which
led to the theosophical worldview. At that time, Du
Bois-Reymond said the following: if we look at the human being
scientifically, he appears to us as a cooperation of unaware
atoms. Explaining the human being scientifically means to
understand these atomic movements down to the last detail.
— He is of the opinion that one has solved this problem
scientifically, if one is able to indicate any movement of the
atoms at any place of the brain if one says, I think, or, give
me an apple. Du Bois-Reymond calls this the
“astronomical” knowledge of the human being. Like a
starry sky in microcosm the moved groups of human atoms would
look. What one did not understand is the origin of feeling and
thinking in the consciousness whose movements of atoms I know
exactly. No natural science can determine this. No natural
science can say how consciousness originates. Du Bois-Reymond
concluded then as follows: with the sleeping human being who is
not aware of the sensation which expresses itself in the words,
I see red, we have the physical group of the moved body parts
before ourselves. With regard to this sleeping body, we do not
need to say, we shall not know, ignorabimus. We can understand
the sleeping human being. However, no naturalist can understand
the awake human being. In the sleeping human being that does
not exist which exists with the awake one, namely the
consciousness by which he faces us as a spiritual being.

At
that time, the despondency of the natural sciences made a
further advance impossible; one could not yet think of
theosophy or spiritual science because the natural sciences
marked sharply the limit, had put the point up to which they
want to go their way. Because of this self-restriction, which
the physical research has imposed on itself, the theosophical
worldview started in the same time. Nobody states that the
human being, when he falls asleep in the evening and wakes in
the morning again, stops being in the evening and comes into
being the next morning anew. However, Du Bois-Reymond says that
at night that does not exist with the human being, which exists
in him at daytime. Here is for the theosophical worldview the
possibility to start. The sensory consciousness does not speak
in the sleeping human being. However, while the naturalist
rests on that which this sensory consciousness provides, he can
say nothing about that which goes beyond it, about the
spiritual, because he just lacks that which makes the human
being the spiritual being.

With the means of physical research, we cannot penetrate into
the spiritual. The physical research rests on the
sense-perceptible. That which is no longer perceptible if the
human being sleeps cannot be an object of this research.
However, we have to look for the being, which makes the human
being a spiritual being, in this something that one can no
longer perceive with the sleeping human being. One cannot state
anything sooner about that which goes beyond the purely
material, the sensuous, until — the naturalist can know
nothing about that — organs, spiritual eyes are created,
which also see that which exceeds the sensuous. Therefore, one
must not say, here are the limits of knowledge, but only, here
are the limits of the sensuous knowledge. The naturalist
perceives with the senses, however, he is not a spiritual seer.
Nevertheless, he must become a seer to be able to behold the
spiritual of the human being. Any deeper wisdom in the world
strives for that, not for mere extension of the circumference
of sensuous knowledge, but for the increase of the human
abilities. This is also the big difference between the modern
natural sciences and theosophy. The naturalist says to himself,
the human being has senses with which he perceives, and reason
with which he combines the sensory perception. What one cannot
reach with it lies beyond the scientific knowledge. —
Theosophy has another view. It says, you are right, naturalist,
if you judge from your point of view, you are just right, as
the blind person is right to say from his point of view that
the world is without light and colours.

I
do not raise any objection against the scientific point of
view; I would like to confront it only with the view of
theosophy or spiritual science which says: it is possible, nay,
it is sure that the human being does not need to stop at the
point of view on which he stands today. It is possible that
organs, spiritual eyes develop in a similar way as in this
physical body senses, eyes and ears have developed. If these
organs are developed, higher abilities appear.

One
has to believe this at first — no, one not even needs to
believe it; one accepts it only impartially as a story.
However, as true as not all believers of the “history of
natural creation” have seen what is stated in it as facts
— for how many are there who have seen these facts really
—, just as little one can show the fact of the
extrasensory knowledge here to everybody. The usual sensuous
person cannot come into this field. We are only able to get
into the spiritual fields with the methods of esoteric
research. If the human being transforms himself into a tool for
the higher forces to look into the worlds concealed to the
sensuous human being, then particular phenomena appear in him.
I speak about that in detail in my ninth talk about the
internal development. The usual human being cannot see himself
or perceive the objects in his surroundings consciously if his
senses sleep. However, if the human being applies the methods
of esoteric research, this inability stops, then he starts
perceiving the impressions in the astral world consciously.

At
first, there is a transition, which everybody knows, between
the exterior life of the sensory perception and that life,
which does not die down even in the deepest sleep. This
transition is the chaos of the dreams. Everybody knows it,
mostly only as an echo of the experiences of the day. How
should he absorb anything new in sleep? The internal human
being has still no perception organs. Nevertheless, something
exists. Life is there. What has come out of the body with the
sleep remembers, and this memory ascends in more or less
muddled pictures during sleep. If you want further information
about these matters, take the essays How Does One Attain
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? Then gradually order and
harmony start coming into the realm of dreams. This is a sign
of the fact that the human being starts developing spiritually;
and then he does not only see echoes of reality chaotically in
the dreams but also things that do not exist for the usual
life.

Indeed, those who want to remain in the sensuous field say,
these are only dreams. — However, if you attain insight
into the highest world secrets, you can be quite uninterested
whether you have received them in your dreams or in a sensuous
way. Assume that Graham Bell (Alexander G.B., 1847-1922) would
have invented the telephone in his dreams. It would not matter
today if the telephone had become a significant and useful
equipment at any rate. The clear and regular dreams are the
beginning. If the human being settles down in the dreams in the
silence of the nightlife, if he has got used for a while to
perceiving quite different worlds, then the time also soon
comes when he learns to step out into reality with this new
perception. Then this whole world gets a new appearance to him,
and he is aware of this new, as we are aware of the sensuous,
if we go through these rows of seats, through everything that
you see here.

Then he is in a new state of consciousness; it presents itself
something new, something essential in him. Then the human being
thereby advances in his development, finally to the point of
view where he perceives not only the peculiar phenomena of the
higher worlds as light phenomena with the spiritual eye, but
hears also tones of the higher worlds sounding, so that the
things say to him their spiritual names and face him with new
meaning. The language of the mysteries expresses this with the
words: the human being beholds the sun at midnight. That means
that no spatial obstacles are there to see the sun on the other
side of the earth. Then also, the actions of the sun become
obvious to him, and then he perceives the harmony of the
spheres, which the Pythagoreans represented as truth. This
sounding, this harmony of the spheres becomes something real
for him. Poets who were seers at the same time knew that there
is a sort of sphere harmony. Only somebody who grasps Goethe
from this point of view can understand him. For example, one
can accept the words in ThePrologue in Heaven (Faust
I) either only as a phrase or as a higher truth. Where
Faust is introduced into the spiritual world in the second
part, he speaks again of this sounding, “in these sounds
we spirits hear the new day already born.”

There we have the connection between the physical research and
theosophy or spiritual science. Du Bois-Reymond pointed to the
fact that only the sleeping human being can be an object of the
physical research. However, if now the human being starts
opening his internal senses if he starts hearing and beholding
a spiritual reality, then the whole building of elementary
theosophy, which Haeckel has built up so wonderfully, starts
getting a quite new shine, a quite new meaning. In this
miraculous construction, we see a simple living being as primal
being, but we can also trace back our being spiritually to a
former state of consciousness.

I
deal now with the theosophical or spiritual-scientific teaching
of evolution. Of course, one has completely to ignore
“proofs” in a single talk. It is natural that for
everybody, who only knows the usual ideas of the origin of the
human being, everything sounds implausible and fantastic that I
have to say. However, all these ideas have arisen from the
ruling materialistic circles of thought. Nevertheless, many
people, who reject the reproach of materialism far from
themselves, are only biased in — indeed, comprehensible
— self-deception. One hardly knows the true theosophical
or spiritual-scientific teaching of evolution today. If
opponents speak of it, someone who knows it notices immediately
that their objections come from a caricature of this teaching.
For to all those who only accept a soul or a mind, which
express themselves within the human or animal organisations,
the theosophical way of thinking is quite incomprehensible.
With such persons, any discussion about this object is
infertile. They would have to emancipate themselves from the
materialistic suggestions first, in which they live, and they
would have to familiarise themselves with the basis of the
spiritual-scientific way of thinking.

As
well as the sensuous-scientific method of research traced back
the physical-bodily organisation to distant uncertain primeval
times, the spiritual-scientific way of thinking does it
relating to soul and mind. The latter does not conflict with
the known scientific facts; it only cannot accept the
materialistic interpretation of these facts. The natural
sciences pursue the physical living beings backward to their
origins. They get to simpler and simpler organisms. They say
now that the perfect living beings are descended from these
simple, imperfect ones. This is true, as far as one considers
the physical corporeality, although the hypothetical forms of
the primeval times of which the materialistic science speaks do
not completely comply with those, which the theosophical or
spiritual-scientific research knows. However, this may not
concern us for our present purpose.

In
the sensuous-physical respect, spiritual science also
recognises the relationship of the human being with the higher
mammals, with the great apes. However, one cannot speak about a
descent of the modern human being from a being that equals the
present apes mentally. The situation is different. Everything
that materialism brings forward in this respect is based on a
simple error in reasoning. One may make clear this error using
a trivial comparison, which is not incorrect, although it is
trivial. One takes two persons. The one is morally inferior,
intellectually insignificant; the other is morally of high
standing, intellectually significant. Assume that you can
determine the relationship of both. Are you allowed to conclude
now that the outranking person is descended from such an
undeveloped person? By no means. One could be surprised by the
other fact that both persons are related; they are brothers.
However, the common father was neither equivalent to the one
nor to the other brother. One of the brothers became
degenerate; the other has worked his way up. The materialistic
natural sciences commit the mistake indicated in this
comparison. According to the facts known to them, they have to
assume a relationship between ape and human being. However,
they are not allowed now to conclude: the human being is
descended from the animal identical to an ape. They would
rather have to assume a primal being — a common physical
ancestor; but the ape became degenerate; the human being is the
higher developed brother.

What raised that primal being, on one side, to the human being,
and what pushed the other down to the apes? Theosophy or
spiritual science says, the human soul itself has done it. This
human soul already existed at that time, when there on the
physical-visible surface of the earth as the highest sensuous
beings only those common ancestors of the human being and the
ape walked around. The best of these ancestors were able to
submit to the higher education process of the soul; the
inferior ones were not. That is why the present human soul has
a soul ancestor as the body has a physical ancestor. However,
for the sensuous perception the soul would not have been
recognised in the body at the time of those
“ancestors” in the modern sense. It belonged in a
certain respect still to the “higher worlds.” It
also had other abilities and forces than the present human
soul. It lacked the present mental activity and moral attitude.
It did not produce tools from the things of the outside world
and did not establish states. Its activity was still directed
considerably to the transformation, to the reorganisation of
the “forefathers' bodies.” It transformed the
imperfect brain, so that this could later be the bearer of the
thinking activity. As the soul directed outwardly builds
machines today, the ancestor's soul still worked on the human
ancestor's body itself. One can object, of course: why can the
soul no longer build the own body to such an extent? —
This just results from the fact that the strength, which was
once used up for the transformation of organs, was later
directed outward to the control and regulation of the natural
forces.

Thus, one gets to a double origin of the human being in the
primeval times. This did not originate mentally only by
perfection of the sensuous organs. However, the human
“soul” was there already when the
“forefathers” still walked around on earth. It
selected — this is, of course, only comparatively spoken
— a part of the “forefathers' host” to which
it gave an external physical expression, which made him the
present human being. The other part of this host atrophied,
became degenerate, and forms the present great apes. These
formed — in the true sense of the word — from the
human ancestor as his branch. Those “ancestors” are
the physical human ancestors; but they could be it only because
they could transform the human souls in themselves. Thus, the
human being is descended from this “forefather”
physically; his soul, however, is descended from his
“soul forefather.”

Now
one can go back again farther in the pedigree of the beings.
There one comes to a physically even more imperfect ancestor.
However, also at this time the “soul forefather” of
the human being already existed. This had raised this ancestor
to the ape existence, again leaving behind the brothers
incapable of development on the concerning level. Beings
originated from them whose descendants are mammals below the
apes. Thus, one can go back to that distant past when on the
earth only those simplest living beings existed from which
Haeckel lets originate all higher ones. In addition, their
contemporary had been already the “soul ancestor”
of the human being. He transformed the useful ones and left
behind the useless ones on every particular level. The whole
sum of the earthly living beings is descended from the human
being in reality. What thinks and acts as “soul” in
him today has caused the development of the living beings.

When our earth was in the beginning, the human being was still
a soul being. He began his career, while he formed the simplest
body. The whole sequence of the living beings signifies nothing
else than the backward stages through which he developed his
body up to present perfection. The present living beings do no
longer reproduce those figures, which their ancestors had on a
certain stage when they separated from the human pedigree. They
have not stopped, but they have atrophied according to a
certain principle that I cannot take into consideration here
because of the necessary shortness of this representation. The
interesting is now that one gets externally also to a pedigree
of the human being by means of spiritual science that is not so
unlike to Haeckel's pedigree. However, Haeckel everywhere makes
— hypothetical — animals from the physical
“ancestors” of the human being. However, one has to
put the still imperfect forefathers of the human being to all
places where Haeckel inserts the names of animals, and the
animals — indeed, all beings — are only the
atrophied, degenerated forms which have maintained those stages
through which the human soul has formed. There is an external
resemblance between Haeckel's and the theosophical or
spiritual-scientific pedigrees; internally, they are worlds
apart from each other.

That is why one can learn elementary spiritual science so well
from Haeckel's executions. One needs only to penetrate the
facts worked on by him theosophically or
spiritual-scientifically and to raise his own naive philosophy
to a higher one. If Haeckel reprimands and criticises such
“higher” philosophy, he is just naive himself. One
may compare him, for example, with somebody who has brought it
only up to the multiplication table and says, what I know, is
true, and the higher mathematics is only a fantastic stuff.
— Nevertheless, the thing is not at all in such a way
that a theosophist wants to disprove what an elementary fact of
the natural sciences is; but only in such a way that the
researcher taken in materialistic suggestions does not at all
know about what theosophy talks.

It
depends on the human being which philosophy he has. Fichte said
this with the words: who does not have a perceiving eye cannot
see the colours and who owns no receptive soul cannot see the
spirit. Goethe expressed the same thought in the famous
saying:

Unless the eyes were like the sun,
How could we see the light?
Unless God's own force lived in us,
How could delight us the divine?

Presenting a remark of Feuerbach (Ludwig F., 1804-1872, German
philosopher) in the proper light, one can say, everybody sees
the picture of God in such a way as he himself is. The sensuous
one makes a sensuous god to himself, someone who perceives the
mental finds the mental also in his god. — A philosopher
of the ancient Greece already noted, if lions, bulls, and oxen
made gods to themselves, they would be similar to lions, bulls,
and oxen. In the fetishist, something also lives as the highest
spiritual principle. However, he has not yet found it, he did
not yet get around to seeing more in his god than the wood
block. The fetishist cannot worship more than he feels in
himself. He judges himself still like the wooden block. Who
does not see more than whirling atoms, who sees the highest
only in the material little points has just recognised nothing
of the higher in himself.

Indeed, Haeckel honestly acquired to himself what he presented
to us in his writings, and, hence, we have to allow him the
mistakes of his virtues, too. The positive effect of his work
remains, the negative one disappears. From a higher point of
view, one can say, the fetishist worships the fetish, a
lifeless being, and the materialistic atomist does not worship
one small idol only, but many small idols, which he calls
atoms. The word “worship” is not to be taken
literally, of course, because, the “materialistic”
thinker has not given up fetishism but praying. As big as the
superstition of the fetishist is, as big is that of the
materialist. The materialistic atom is nothing but a fetish.
Atoms are even in the wooden block. Haeckel says in a passage,
“we see God in the stone, in the plant, in the animal, in
the human being. Everywhere is God.” However, he sees
only that God whom he understands. Goethe lets the Earth Spirit
speak to Faust characteristically:

Your peer is the spirit you comprehend:
Mine you are not!

Thus, the materialist sees the whirling atoms in the stone, in
the plant, in the animal, and in the human being and perhaps in
the piece of art, and refers to the fact that he possesses a
uniform worldview and has overcome the old superstition. The
theosophists also have a uniform worldview, and we can use the
same words as Haeckel. We see God in the stone, in the plant
and in the human being, but we see no whirl of atoms, but the
living god, the spiritual god whom we attempt to find in nature
outside because we also seek him in ourselves.